Huh? From TFA: "Great collaboration continues on the Community Edition with the release of LunaCE. The webOS-Ports team have combined the community efforts into one package and made it simple to install on to TouchPad devices through their Preware software."

...but only when they have the backing of serious companies whose business models depend on them. (See Linux, Apache.) When a platform is dying because of lack of customer interest (See Solaris, BeOS, Irix), going open source won't save it.

...but only when they have the backing of serious companies whose business models depend on them. (See Linux, Apache.) When a platform is dying because of lack of customer interest (See Solaris, BeOS, Irix), going open source won't save it.

Also died because the hardware was terrible....

I really wanted to get a Palm back in the day, went to see it in the store, and that keyboard was so puny I couldn't possible use it.

I'm not sure lack of consumer interest was the main problem. webos had a decent following, but there were no new devices after a long time and the only company really selling them was sprint (for a long time) and then only sorta half heartedly. I think the real problem was a lack of *vendor* interest. Had Palm not run out of money and stuck in there long term, I think there'd be a third OS afoot still and I wouldn't be suffering under this shitpile they call Android. I guess Android is alright, don't ge

Usually. But in this case, Palm just ran out of money. If they had been able to persist, they'd have gained market. Look how long it took Android to come up. It's up now, so there's more devices. It was *not* like that initially. Personally, I didn't think they'd ever succeed, especially at first. But look at them now. Palm would have done the same thing. Hell, even HP would have done the same thing, if that CEO hadn't gotten fired. The new management at HP abandoned the platform after they fired

For whatever reasons, they failed to develop customers. If you think that's the fault of bad management, I'm not going to argue. The fact remains that the platform ain't commercially viable, and making it open source isn't going to change that.

Oh, definitely. I just wanted to blame management and bad fortune, not webos. The platform is dead, I agree on all counts of that. I quit developing for it and tell customers on a monthly basis that I have no interest in updating the apps -- though I offer to help, help fork, or help publish if they wish to take on the code. But I don't think the half-hearted year-or-so they gave it (with no decent hardware releases) was enough to say that they couldn't develop a customer base. They got about as much a

FYI BeOS didn't 'die' due to lack of customer interest, it died because it's competitor (Microsoft) bought it out and decided to discontinue it. Irix is still used in some places.. yes, scary I know but it's true. And we only wish Solaris was dying.

Your history is way off. MS never bought BeOS. (You're probably thinking of the lawsuit Be filed against MS, claiming anticompetitive practices.) That was Palm, and they bought BeOS long after Be had basically gone out of business. The intention was to make it into a replacement for PalmOS. When I interviewed for a job at Palm (2005, I think) and I asked what they were doing with BeOS, people tended to groan and talk about how stupid that acquisition was.

It's an open source project based on a Linux kernel, so it will run on whatever the community (we/you/them?) decides to make it run on.Even though I didn't use it for that long, I actually found the card-based UI absolutely brilliant, and I long for it when using anything else. It just makes so much sense versus lame hacks like the "recent apps" in ICS. For that one feature alone I would keep webOS alive myself if I could.

The cards worked better because I knew what I wanted running and what I wanted closed. Android seems to close the things I'm using and leave all this shit open I don't care about. I use google maps like once a month, and facebook next to never. Why would I want them running, but want ICS closing shit I'm trying to cut and paste between? Happens constantly and I have no control over it because in android users are considered too stupid or lazy to manage what apps they want open. In webos, when I'm done I close it and when I want it open, it stays open. That's brilliant. the only way the android way would really work very well is if it had a human intelligence managing what apps should close and what should stay open. I would gladly volunteer for this, if I could, but I can't because android got it wrong.

Sure cards are better from any educated point of view. In principle.But that's not the question. The question is about the availability, the licence and most of all the devices to run this thing on. I have ICS on my tablet, but that doesn't make me a fan-boy. Show me a download location from where I can get firmware for my device and I will gladly download and try.See, this is why WebOS is just vaporware, sorry. Okay, I compromise: I have root on my ICS. Where can I download a version to run from the root c

Whatever happened to the video game console industry model of selling hardware at a loss initially, but making a profit at some point into the lifecycle? People like to complain about the "anemic" hardware in the TouchPad, but it's embedded hardware, they all have some drawbacks. I love the hell out of mine, I only wish I'd been able to buy more than one at that price.

The webOS GUI is interesting. Too bad the project's name sounds like spanish slang for "testicles" (huevos). I suggest a name change to "kohOneS". At least it'll sound intimidating to iOS and Android fanboys.

Seriously, did you fail high school Spanish or just jack up your Google translate? "Huevos" means "eggs". It is as much slang for "testicles" as "nuts". The word is "idiom" which is not the same as slang at all.......